Monday, July 15, 2013

I have not always liked Stevie Nicks, and I wouldn't blame anyone for suspecting that I bear her animosity to this day. For years now, I've been writing what amount to Bill Brasky jokes about her, inserting her into situations wherever something stupid seems like it would be funnier if a proper name were attached. I need to describe someone rabidly beating a monoglot au pair? Sure, have Stevie Nicks do it with a WWE Championship belt. Someone's driving a Smart Car through a co-op and screaming, "WE WON THE WAR SO WE COULD EAT STEAK"? Make it Stevie again. Great.

All of this is assuredly unfair to her, since of course Stevie Nicks has done nothing to me short of getting "Gold Dust Woman" stuck in my head in inappropriate venues, like funerals. But, for whatever reason, I started telling jokes about her in real life (and later on Twitter) years ago. Only lately, working on a longer piece about Fleetwood Mac, did I start to wonder why.

Which, of course, made Vulture's June publication of a profile of Stevie Nicks feel just about perfect. Because, on top of being interesting in its own right, it confirmed almost every impulse to make up absurd factoids about Stevie Nicks with paragraph after paragraph celebrating everything sui generis about her you could possibly imagine.

For example, culled from just that article:

In Your Dreams has two songs referencing vampires, including "Moonlight," inspired by a tear-filled viewing of The Twilight Saga: New Moon...

Her look...has influenced fashion designers from Anna Sui to somebody's brother's girlfriend who gave her an organically dyed silk poncho during tour rehearsals because Nicks had inspired her to go into fashion... A woman in the U.K. named Johanna Pieterman paints Celtic-style portraits of Nicks with your spirit animal of choice (usually an owl, wolf, stallion, or unicorn)...

She communicates with her fans by handwritten letters that Johnston [an assistant] scans and uploads to the Internet. She hasn't had a driver’s license since 1978 ("Where would I go by myself?") and is only reachable by phone through landline or Johnston. I was with them once when Johnston's cell phone rang; Nicks harmonized with the ringtone...

There are Buddhas everywhere. She's not a believer, she says, "but I probably will be someday."

Above her bathtub is a sign reading "DON'T PISS OFF THE FAIRIES."

The article is an embarrassment of Stevie Nicksness, and the first thing it made me do was go through my Twitter archive and the Mr. DestructoFacebook page and find every Stevie Nicks factoid published there in the last few years. I realize that this might seem silly to you, but I feel very strongly about sharing all of it. Thank you.

"Let me know if you need help learning how to score."
— note written on a scarf given to Tim Tebow, with an image burned into it as if by divine light, depicting Stevie Nicks' nude body coiled around The Christ's.

"I am a cat in the dark. I am the darkness." — Stevie Nicks, returning from the astral plane where she summons the powers necessary to kill.
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) June 26, 2010

ROCK TRIVIA: Singer Stevie Nicks is terrified of dogs because as a child she watched her father turn into one.

I live in a bad neighborhood, but just once I'd like to leave my apartment without seeing Stevie Nicks beating up a dude for paintball money
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) June 27, 2010

Stevie Nicks Donates Thousands of Diaphanous Scarves to Homeless East Coast Refugees of Superstorm Sandy, Calls on Them to Join Her; 'We Are All Gypsies Now,' Singer Says

Stevie Nicks sits in a room with walls punctured by 20-sided-dice impacts, her campaign, not even hardly begun, already in ruins.
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) June 30, 2010

Near fatal accident in automatic sedan and severe frontal-lobe trauma results in a vigilante Stevie Nicks wandering inner city streets looking to "drop a tranny."

Stevie Nicks fills a sac in her throat with air to appear larger while raining abuse down on the cowering head of an underage Laotian valet.
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) June 30, 2010

Every year for the food drive, Stevie Nicks loads up a box with dented cans because—hey, worse comes to worst, it's just free Botox.

You come home in the middle of the day & there she is again: Stevie Nicks on the floor, a spatchcocked chicken over her face like in Alien.
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) July 27, 2010

After seeing Jurassic Park, Stevie Nicks travels everywhere with her eggs secreted in a chilled compartment in a Barbasol can.

A hungover Stevie Nicks claims to be at the hospital for the Make a Wish Foundation & hits cancer beds to steal banana bags & oxygen tanks.
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) September 7, 2010

Stevie Nicks uses the short blade on her Swiss Army Knife to pry the sapphire eyes out of another stolen jade cat.

Stevie Nicks doesn't give a shit if it IS consecrated ground. She's digging the box up & getting the antique ring that idiot was buried with
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) September 24, 2010

Reunited with her Goa'uld symbiote, Stevie Nicks opens the Stargate to a world endlessly reverberating with the sound of a gargantuan Grace Slick—her eyes blinded with two ruby-studded daggers—screaming torrents of pure blood and drowning the fields below.

Stevie Nicks clicks through her Internet Explorer history, and it's just six weeks of Almond Roca gift boxes and Youtube vlogs from total nerdbras looking to cash in the V-card.

A picture of Stevie Nicks at the Parthenon stubbing out a cigarette and wearing an "I'M A CRETAN" t-shirt...
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) April 3, 2012

Unable to get the dried wine deep at the bottom of her champagne flutes, a lazy Stevie Nicks turns them upside down and rinses them out via the water-pressure fury of her bidet.

Stevie Nicks closing the blinds and slicing five-inch sections off newly-bought drapes, vowing that no one will discover her scarf secret...
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) April 3, 2012

You open the door to the nursery to find a figure standing over the crib, then scream at the sight of you and disappear out the window in a dozen multicolored vortices, like scarves becoming fog and twisted planes of light itself. It was Stevie Nicks, stealing the baby's breath, and now she can stay alive for another month.

Stevie Nicks twirls the microscopes into focus, peering into the two samples. Finally, she sighs. Finally she can weaponize gypsum.
— Jeb Lund (@Mobute) June 15, 2012

Et tu, Mr. Destructo? is a politics, sports and media blog whose purpose is to tell jokes or be really right about things. All of us have real jobs and don't need the hassle that telling jokes here might occasion, which is why some contributors find it more tasteful to pretend to be dead mass murderers.